What Happens And How Does The Loneliness Of Sonia And Sunny End?

Question

Really diving deep into the finale of 'Sonia & Sunny.' No spoilers for the climax, please, but what's the overall emotional tone and character resolution?

Eddie V. Agot · Answer

I haven’t read ‘The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny’ so can’t provide any information on the ending for you. Perhaps someone on Goodreads who has finished reading it would be able to help or you could look up a discussion on the book. These types of stories about isolated characters in search of a place in the world in order to find connection really can leave a lasting impression. Reading ‘Lonely Bride’, for example, where an arranged marriage in a wealthy family leads to the ‘Lonely Bride’ being locked in a gilded cage and left to her solitude, and her husband, distant and cold, left to himself, too, and the resolution is given in a quiet and hard-won understanding between the two of them as opposed to some dramatic reversal.

Theo · Answer

My immediate impression of ‘The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny’ is of a slow and honest mending of relationship. Sonia’s lonely past is now a story to be written by her in her fiction, and Sunny’s action in retrieving from a rather hostile man the object of much of Sonia’s earlier loneliness (the Badal Baba amulet) and bringing it back to her in Goa is the turning point of the story for both of them. They can now start to trust each other again. The mending of relationship is a quiet affair. It consists of sharing tasks, of apologies, of small kind actions. But it is enough to show that both characters can now continue to live with what has happened to them. It is a very satisfying end to their story.

Chase · Answer

'The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny' unfolds at a leisurely pace. It is a beautifully interwoven novella that follows the two title characters through their lives spread out over years and places. While Sonia leaves her isolating college life in Vermont for an often complicated relationship with a much older, world famous painter, Sunny leads a secret life in New York with his own relationship and a very traditional family that expects him to fulfill family obligations. But in the end, it is India that becomes the focal point for both of them and, in a beautiful, healing manner, they find each other. The men from Sonia’s past are confronted by Sunny and he even travels to Goa to retrieve an amulet that has been tied to the traumatic episode of her near rape in London and which she had given to him to keep for her. Slowly but surely Sonia finds the language for her experiences and begins to write her way to a sense of self. The long episode of the ghost dog and his transformation as well as the transfer of the amulet to Goa are two of the key moments in the novella. The book ends on a peaceful note in Goa where Sunny and Sonia meet again after years and she finds her voice as a writer. I loved this book not only because of the beautiful way in which healing is portrayed as slow, arduous and often awkward but also because it is a beautiful tribute to Desai’s own journey as a writer.

Sawyer · Answer

What I found pretty amazing about the ending of ‘The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny’ is how it managed to tie up the story of the personal struggle of the two main characters and their cultural background. While all the family conflicts and secrets are resolved and all the artifacts stolen are returned, Sonia is able to find her writer’s voice. The return of the amulet by Sunny in Goa is a big moment and how Sonia’s writing deals with the rest of the strange and ghostly events that took place is beautiful too. But also the rest of the characters, like Babita, come to terms with themselves too and it all feels right and earned for the reunion of the two main characters. It’s all very tender and strong at the same time and it gave me a lot to think about: it’s not easy to find your way back to your place of belonging but it can be done in small steps.

Zane · Answer

What ultimately happens in the book is that after many years Sonia finds Sunny again in Goa. After much searching, Sunny has found the amulet connected to Sonia’s trauma. And Sonia has started to write down the stories that were so much of her trauma. So in the book the ghost-dog and some other reckonings with her family are written down by her as part of her healing. I liked that the two were found after all these years of emotional turmoil and physical dislocation. And that it wasn’t easy for them to get back to each other and that there was no neat and easily doable resolution to their stories. It was hopeful but also believable and left to the reader’s imagination.

Cath Riona · Answer

I found the ending to be devastatingly hopeful. The ending was devastating because the two main characters had to leave each other. However, the ending was hopeful because of how they left each other. They left each other with respect for one another, and without any desperation to be with the other. The last dialogue of the two main characters was simple, but powerful. “Thank you,” she said. “For what?” he replied. “For seeing me,” she said. And he just nodded. That was enough for the two of them. That was enough to break the spell that each of them had been under. The rest of the book was then spent showing the readers the rest of the story. The two main characters packed up their things and the readers were introduced to the rest of the characters. The two main characters said goodbye to each of the secondary characters and then the two of them traveled off in different directions. The emotion in the ending of the book was left to the reader’s imagination. The two main characters were not healed, but they were no longer lonely people. They were people who were lonely, and that is a world of difference.

Jennifer Deyoung · Answer

LOL all these analyses go deeper than I do. Maybe I’m just really simple but a) she gets on a train and b) he goes home. The end. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. This is literary fiction and obviously the writer didn’t know how to write a romantic novel and therefore ended it on an artsy freeze frame. Many, many literary novels do this – they resort to ‘ambiguity’ when they’re unable to write in detail. It’s obvious. It’s pretentious. I prefer novels where the writer can actually complete them properly. So here I’m guessing at whether the two of them could or should be ‘together’. But of course there’s always ‘maybe’. Maybe they’re ‘together’. Oh wait. No. They aren’t. Or maybe they are. I wasted hours of my life imagining them. In future I shall read only the best of Genre Fiction – written by people with real courage to finish their stories.

Oli Trejo · Answer

In his final act as a main character, Sunny develops the last roll of film from the summer. Only a few of the photographs turn out well. Most of them are too blurred or too overexposed. And there is one wonderful photograph of Sonia laughing. He never knew he had taken it. He does not try to locate her in order to return the photograph to her. He frames it instead and it becomes a permanent part of his decor. He loves the photograph not as a memento of Sonia but as a beautiful and unexpected reminder that connections to others and moments of beauty do exist for him. The end. In the novel, Sonia’s loneliness is expressed and then solved in a single moment. She is on a plane. She looks out the window of the plane at the clouds below. She feels scared but she also feels the size of the world for the first time. On the other side of the world from her is another very lonely person. But in possessing a single memory of the other lonely person, each of them has been sustained by their connection to the other.

Joylan Lecaros Logmao · Answer

What was finally going to happen in this emotional but basically mediocre novel? A huge confrontation? A terrible tragedy? Instead we get a huge build up for nothing. But in a weird way that's the perfect ending to this novel. All Sonia and Sunny have to do is talk about how alone they want to be. The rest of the book is them separately trying to rebuild their lives to be solitary in a way that feels chosen rather than imposed upon them. Sunny finds his old woodworking hobby again and feels comforted in the quality thing that he is making. Sonia finally starts to write her own story. It is a beautifully mature ending to a novel. It shows that although they had encountered each other for a brief time, they got something important from each other. Namely that they were able to learn how to be alone when needed and to become whole on their own. This is far from romantic love as the cure for all of our existing problems of loneliness. It's all very good.

Japhta Jay Maluleke · Answer

Right after finishing the book I started reading the first chapter again. It changed completely. At first the empty rooms and the silent phones just filled me with sadness but now those same motifs are experienced in a totally different way. There’s space, warmth and emptiness but it’s not sad anymore. The same descriptions of rooms and quiet moments at the end of the book have a totally different emotional charge. This is not the ending of the story but the new way of perceiving the same motifs on the journey that the story took. It’s a really constructed book and this is why I immediately started reading the book from the beginning again in order to be able to appreciate the ending of the book. It’s a really rare novel.

John Emmanuel Villaluz · Answer

I have to admit that after a really great and intense middle to the book where these two damaged people have really awkward and really tense conversations, the ending kind of fell flat for me. All that tension and then she moves away and he starts a garden. I don’t even remember how they ended up there. I wanted something more than this kind of very slow and uneventful resolution to these two people’s stories. It felt like the author had written herself into a corner with these two very damaged people and didn’t know how to get them out of the corner that she had written them into, so she just moved them to a different location. It was kind of lame. I wanted catharsis, not a slow fade to beige. Perhaps literary fiction just isn’t for me. I need a plot with some kind of stakes.

What Happens And How Does The Loneliness Of Sonia And Sunny End?

11 Answers

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